Concreting over flood plains, cutting down trees and expanding cities is making flooding much worse – and we need to act on that knowledge. Climate change is NOT main cause of floods, say experts | Mail Online Changing landscapes, not global warming, to blame for increased flood risk Studies have shown that there is a clear link between population density and flooding. Currently 800 million humans are living in areas vulnerable to flooding. This is predicted to rise by a further 140 million during 21st Century as we see continued economic and population growth. At the same time reduction of woodland, changing river flow and the urbanisation of flood plains will increase flood risk in many regions.
The inconvenient truth: houses built on floodplains could flood
30 January 2014
Role reversal: a river of land in fields of water. Tim Ireland/PA
Ministers should be applauded for recognising that there’s simply no way we could tell the thousands of key workers and low income families, desperate for a decent home, that we can’t build any more new homes because of concerns about flood plains. David Orr, National Housing Federation, BBC News, 2007.
For the past six weeks, Somerset has experienced its most significant flooding in decades that have at last required calling out the army.
While commentators fixate on dredging rivers, or more sustainably planting trees, or reintroducing beavers as the solution to prevent more homes from being flooded, those with longer memories may cast them back to 2007, when much of central and southwestern England was underwater from some of the worst flooding in living memory.
Communities Minister Eric Pickles might like to consider the inconvenient truth of his own words in 2007 while in opposition. Following the floods, he said in response to Labour’s housing strategy that: “if you build houses on flood plains it increases the likelihood that people will be flooded”. Recommendations ignored
But a general election later, in 2012 prime minister David Cameron is pledging to “cut through the dither” that is holding Britain in “paralysis” and has brought forward by contentious measures to relax rules on planning applications with an eye to boosting growth, and providing 75,000 new homes. The National Planning Policy Framework is proclaimed “simple”, and had reduced planning policy from more than 1,000 pages to under 100, said to pave the way for swifter, clearer decisions.
Otto Thoresen, director-general of the The Association of British Insurers, expressed immediate concern that the framework could lead to greater inappropriate development in flood risk areas, something that the current “rigorous planning system” was a bulwark against. The result, he predicted, would not be the “stimulation of the economy,” but “misery for people when their homes are flooded”.
The National Flood Forum’s chairman, Charles Tucker, similarly argued that the new framework “has, at a stroke, scrapped the carefully constructed raft of technical guidance, context and definitions built up over years” for flood protection.
This CPD film is designed to support construction industry professionals in adapting to the impacts of extreme weather and climate change. It has been produced by Climate SouthWest in partnership with Future Foundations and Constructing Excellence South West, and is supported by the Construction Clients’ Group.
‘Construction in a Changing Climate: building for resilience’ includes interviews with expert speakers, such as Professor Bill Gething author of 'Design for a Future Climate' (Technology Strategy Board 2010). Featuring onsite case studies (covering homes, commercial buildings and new developments), we hear from a range of industry players who demonstrate how adapting to climate change has been integrated into the development, design and construction of their sites.
CPD film: ‘Construction in a Changing Climate: building for resilience’
This CPD film is designed to support construction industry professionals in adapting to the impacts of extreme weather and climate change. It has been produced by Climate SouthWest in partnership with Future Foundations and Constructing Excellence South West, and is supported by the Construction Clients’ Group.
‘Construction in a Changing Climate: building for resilience’ includes interviews with expert speakers, such as Professor Bill Gething author of 'Design for a Future Climate' (Technology Strategy Board 2010). Featuring onsite case studies (covering homes, commercial buildings and new developments), we hear from a range of industry players who demonstrate how adapting to climate change has been integrated into the development, design and construction of their sites.
The key messages from the film are: The climate is changing and the construction sector needs to take action. Our buildings are already affected by extreme weather and climate change will only make things worse.
Flooding may have shot up the political agenda but that hasn't stopped local planning authorities driving through housing developments in areas at severe risk of flooding.
From Cornwall to London, to Cardiff, Leeds and Northumberland, local authorities across England and Wales have been ignoring the Environment Agency's (EA) protests and waving through developments on flood-prone land. As Britain endures another weekend of torrential rain and further flooding, figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal that last year local councils allowed at least 87 planning developments involving 560 homes to proceed in England and Wales in areas at such high risk of flooding that the EA formally opposed them.
The numbers of homes being built in the face of the EA's opposition are increasing markedly. That rise appears to be part of a broader trend, with developers seeking to push through more projects on land at high risk of flooding to satisfy demand for new houses. Last year, developers proposed 618 construction projects on land the agency deemed to be particularly high risk, an increase of more than a third on the previous year.
Dr Hannah Choke, a flooding expert from the University of Reading, said the figures were "disturbing". "The real problem with the Somerset Levels is that the people are no longer attuned to the landscape," she says. "In the past, everyone who lived there was attached to the agricultural system and they expected flooding. Now people live there because it's a nice place to live and they have lost touch and been removed from the functions of the landscape, so when flooding happens, it causes problems."
A 2012 report by the Government's official climate change adviser – the Climate Change Committee (CCC) – concluded that the planning policy "approval process is not sufficiently transparent or accountable". The report found that 13 per cent of all new developments were on flood plains. While many flood zone developments are well protected, one in five was in an area "of significant risk under today's climate". It noted that much of Britain is now so densely populated that developments on flood plains are growing much faster than those outside..
THE WEST COUNTRY: But is it a question, not of homes vs greenfields, but of people vs wildlife? Andrew Gilligan considers the issue in today's Sunday Telegraph - from the Somerset Levels:
Somerset floods: 'Is this area for people to live in or for animals?'
“Retreat is the only sensible policy,” says Colin Thorne, professor of physical geography at Nottingham University and a leading flood expert. “If we fight nature, we will lose in the end.” This view has until now strongly influenced government policy on the Levels. Much stress has been placed on the area’s role as a flood plain where people should expect to get wet. The perhaps brutal calculation has been that it was not worth spending millions dredging rivers and building barriers to protect a few thousand people – especially when the scientists say that it will merely buy time. “Can the Somerset Levels be defended between now and the end of the century? No,” says Prof Thorne. No explicit decision would be taken to abandon the Levels. But the much-hated end to the dredging of the area’s rivers, and the increased flooding that may have resulted, were at least pushing in that direction and letting nature, in at least some places, gradually take its course.
There are, however, a few problems for the “swampist tendency,” as Anthony Gibson, a former farmer’s union official now closely involved with efforts to plan for the area, calls them. The first, as he says, is that “the Levels are very far from a typical flood plain”. They are a deeply artificial, man-made environment, criss-crossed with rivers, canals and channels whose banks have been built up higher than the surrounding land to carry large volumes of water through and out of the area. Because of these banks, the water level in the two main local rivers, the Parrett and the Tone, is up to 10ft higher than the land around it. In flood times, when the rivers burst even these banks, floodwater cannot escape until the level of water in the river is lower than the level on the land around it, and that can take months. Unless you completely destroy the man-made banks, letting the Levels flood more often would not, says Gibson, lead to the lovely natural marsh with wading birds envisaged by the more romantic swampists. Instead, it would create a “slimy, stinking mess” of foetid, stagnant floodwater, unable to escape, finishing off not just the farming and the people but also much of the wildlife. This, indeed, is what happened in 2012.
The other problem, of course, is the politics. The people of the Levels have businesses, homes, rights, and votes. And ghastly as the last month has been for many of them, being in the national spotlight has quite clearly reset the issue in their favour.
It is totally inconsistent that EDDC should seek to extend the boundary at Sidford, not only into the AONB but also into land which has been classified by The Environment Agency as Flood Zone 3b, the worst possible category of floodplain, for industrial development.
This site was previously rejected for development by EDDC on 23rd October 1978 (ref LP7/328/357/GCG) because it is in an AONB, is subject to flooding, is situated over an aquifer where pollution could contaminate the water supply, and the roads are too narrow Flooding is now more extensive and, according to the Halcrow Group report (2008), will be worse still by 2025 to the extent that even Flood Zone 2 will become Flood Zone 3a. Surface water flows down the hills, across the proposed access road and across the field like a river.
Importantly, Port Royal lies in a flood‐risk area; this is even acknowledged in the discredited Royal Haskoning Report: “2. It would not lead to unacceptable pressure on services and would not adversely affect risk of flooding or coastal erosion” Upwards of 30 dwellings at Port Royal would have a considerable impact on the historic East Ham area: “3. It would not damage, and where practical, it will support promotion of wildlife, landscape, townscape or historic interests.” The current needs of Sidmouth as a tourist venue means that the Port Royal area should maintain if not enhance facilities and amenities to match current population and visitors: “4. It would not involve the loss of land of local amenity importance or of recreational value;” And because the Port Royal Steering Group’s Report has not been considered, any proposals to build 30 dwellings could prejudice development of the whole East Ham area: “6. It would not prejudice the development potential of an adjacent site.”
This CPD film is designed to support construction industry professionals in adapting to the impacts of extreme weather and climate change. It has been produced by Climate SouthWest in partnership with Future Foundations and Constructing Excellence South West, and is supported by the Construction Clients’ Group.
, NATASHA CLARK Sunday 02 February 2014
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